In recent years, sheet-like external preparations for skin used in application to the skin are known in various fields such as medical materials and cosmetics. These sheet-like external preparations are mainly prepared by impregnating a sheet base material such as a nonwoven fabric or paper with a component effective against the skin, such as a drug solution or a beauty essence, and are used in application to the skin.
Such generally used sheet-like external preparations prepared by impregnating a 100% cotton nonwoven fabric or 100% rayon nonwoven fabric with a drug solution or a beauty essence are effective in that they have high oxygen permeability. However, they have a problem of falling off during use because they have low adhesion to the skin. Furthermore, since such sheet-like external preparations have high water vapor permeability, they have a problem that the drug solution or the beauty essence evaporates from the nonwoven fabric before sufficiently permeating into the skin, and the sheet-like external preparations lack the sustainability of efficacy.
As a sheet-like external preparation for skin improved in adhesion to the skin, a gel sheet containing a polyacrylic acid and/or a polyacrylic acid salt, a polyhydric alcohol, water, and an external crosslinking agent has been proposed (Patent Document 1).